The slave trade and the population drain
from Black Africa167The major centres of the slave trade on the coast were Malindi, Mombasa,
Tanga, Pemba, Zanzibar, Kilwa and Bagamoyo. Although the latter had
become an important terminus by the middle of the nineteenth century,
Zanzibar still remained the nerve centre of the trade. Hence the truth of the
saying 'When you pipe in Zanzibar, they dance at the lakes.'
Norman R. Bennet mentions three main routes of trade penetration in
the nineteenth century :^5 the first, based on Kilwa, extended to the area around
and beyond Lake Nyasa. All along this route, the Yao tribe procured slaves
for the Arab traders ; the second route began at Bagamoyo, opposite Zanzibar,
passed through Tabora and the land of the Nyamwezi, and then went on to
Ujiji, across Lake Tanganyika and into the interior of the Congo; and the
third itinerary began at such ports as Pangani, Tanga and Mombasa, passing
by Mount Kilimanjaro across Masai territory to the eastern shores of Lake
Victoria.
With the expansion of the slave trade, centres like Ujiji and Tabora
became the outposts of the trade, and tribes like the Yao, the Nyamwezi and
the Ganda became the sorry intermediaries in that ignoble commerce.
The Arab traders penetrated deep into the Congo and even Angola,
according to accounts in 1852 by Portuguese officials who had come in contact
with them. Some authors report that up to 10,000 slaves were being sold
annually at Kilwa and Zanzibar around 1810, whereas by the 1860s the figure
had risen to 70,000 for Zanzibar alone.
The best example of the popular image of the ruthless slave-trader was
Tippoo Tib, who ruled supreme in the Congo basin during the last quarter of
the nineteenth century. This skilful trader raised a private army, establishing
his base first at Ujiji, then moving to Kasongo, Kibonge and Ribariba. His
empire stretched from Lake Tanganyika to the Ituri forest and into the Congo
basin as far as Basoko. He met and assisted a number of explorers such as
Livingstone, Stanley, Wissman and Junker. For a time his position was legalized
by the Belgian authorities, who appointed him Governor of the Falls region
in the Congo Free State. But he represented such a threat that they took up
arms against him, defeating his son Sefu and nephew Rashid in 1893 during
the Arab War of 1892-94. Tippoo Tib withdrew to Zanzibar, where he wrote
his autobiography in Swahili.
Another condottiere of the same ilk was Râbih Ibn Abdullah, who
dominated the Chad region between 1892 and 1900. He controlled Bagirmi,
Bornu, Kanem, Tibesti and the regions of Borku and Waday. Most of the
slaves sold by Râbih were brought from Dâr Fartît, on the northern frontier
of the present-day People's Republic of the Congo. Like Tippoo Tib, he clashed
with European interests. He was killed in 1900, fighting the French troops at
Kousseri in the Baguirmi region west of Lake Chad.
The slave trade in Central and East Africa was thus mainly in the hands of